RoboApe
Second of all, I think you misunderstand; I take no issue whatsoever with anyone disagreeing with the ways Armstrong and Lincoln run the team. My only point is that a winning ball club is a winning ball club, and if the M’s can have sustained success under Zduriencik, it doesn’t make any sense to begrudge two guys just because they run the business differently than you would. I want a winning team. If Zduriencik makes us a winning team, then Kudos to Armstrong and Lincoln for hiring him.

I don’t think DMZ, Dave, or USSM in general is arguing against a different way of doing things possibly having success. What Derek is trying to bring up here isn’t that Zduriencik is capable of doing his job well and bringing success to the team run by Howard The Chuck, it’s that if he does bring success it’s going to be DESPITE Howard The Chuck.

While Dave has brought up some very good points about why there’s hope for this hire (and Coach Z did a good jorb there at the press conference making us feel better about him), even he is guarded against being too optimistic unless certain other conditions are met. Howard The Chuck have been very public about a couple of things (that Derek mentioned) which should concern us all. Their track record has also been spotty at best and they’ll never admit their flaws. Nothing about them has forced us to trust that Chuck Armstrong, in his own words, is the right man to choose the next GM. Nothing about them has forced us to think that Howard Lincoln is anything but an egomaniac who constantly blames a strong and loyal fanbase for not coming out to watch a bad baseball team. Their meddling during Pelekoudas’ brief tenure is further proof that the only people who think Howard The Chuck are reliable are Howard Lincoln and Chuck Armstrong.

Dave earlier also mentioned “results based analysis”, which is what you’re doing. You’re claiming that the ends justify the means. Generally speaking, if the Mariners win a World Series Championship, any one of us would be pleased as punch. However, if we won the World Series with 5 Silvas, 13 Bloomquists, and a bullpen of 7 Julio Mateos, we’d know that that team was the most improbable fluke in the history of sports and you could never recreate success with such a configuration. Thus, while the fluke got us what we wanted, a fluke should never be what we’re shooting for to win. Intelligent, well-executed plans for short term and long term success are what sustain not just franchises, but dynasties. Throwing crap at the wall and hoping it sticks is an absurd way to win, no matter how happy it makes us.

I used to be solidly in that camp. Now, I’m not as sure of that position/criticism. I do know, though, that as long as Lincoln-Armstrong stay strictly on that side of the business and stop meddling in what I agree is a zero-sum business of baseball operations, we’re a helluva lot better off. What resonates most in Derek’s post for me is the resignation that that won’t happen, and the meddling will continue regardless of whether this is a good hire or not.

USSM, Lookout Landing, and other like-minded blogs have been doing these last few years have shown that their ways work and Howard The Chuck’s ways don’t.

I agree. In fact, I’ve often wished that someone would put humility aside and post specific analysis of their good and bad endorsements. Could be player moves (many examples to cite here), team endorsements (weren’t the Rays picked at the start of the year?), trade analysis, freely available talent they identified that panned out elsewhere, and so on.

I know this stuff is all buried here somewhere, but haven’t seen it consolidated anywhere in an “I Told You So” post. Who’s auditing the auditors?

Yes, agree, but that might be part of the problem. Most business, including game consoles, is not zero-sum. If you have a good plan and execute it well, it doesn’t really matter if a competitor also has a good plan well executed. In fact, their success might just expand the overall market, and if the two of you have significantly different approaches, you might not really be competing for the same customers anyway (e.g. how much do the demographics for the Wii and XBox360 really overlap?).

But baseball is a zero-sum game. Every game one teams wins means another team loses a game. If the M’s and A’s take different approaches, they can’t both expand into different markets. There’s no “the M’s are #1 in games-won-by-family-friendly-players and the A’s are #1 in games-won-by-sub-$80M-payroll-teams.” The same approaches to “normal” business do not directly translate to baseball.

In an ideal Internet, this sort of conversation is exactly the discourse comment streams would provide. (Though admittedly if comment streams became too civil it would be drastically more difficult to determine who is or is not “gay”.)

Not to necessarily lump Diplomatic Shark’s opinion with my own, but from these threads I’m inclined to think we both read your post the same way. Your clarification was helpful in addressing the issues I took. Thanks.

If you don’t pull talent into the organization, you can’t win. By FAR the cheapest way to do that is via the draft. It can be done through free-agency, but the margin of error is so small that one Carl Pavano can cripple you.

If that talent doesn’t develop into major-league players, you can’t win either. By FAR the cheapest way to do that is to hire the best minor-league coaches and instructors you can. You can of course pick up major-league players from other organizations, but the margin is again very thin.

As an A’s fan, the scariest thing the Mariners could do is step up tomorrow and announce that they’re spending the equivalent of Richie Sexson’s last yearly salary to hire the very best scouts, coaches and instructors (away from other jobs, if necessary); that they’re beefing up their medical staffs at the minor-league level; and that they’re asking a consulting company to analyze their minor-league pitching practices over the last decade, in consultation with the medical staffs, with a view towards preventing the horrific batch of injuries that Seattle pitching talent seemed to be prone to.

Nothing stats-based there – it’s all scouting, teaching, fundamentals melded with an eye towards using advances in medicine – but it could revolutionize their industry.

Imagine if Seattle could improve their “success rate” on pitchers by even a small amount. That’s one extra cheap, major-league 4th starter each year – or about $10M on the free market with a considerably higher risk of getting zero back – that they’d have over other teams. If nothing else, they’d save money and put a better product on the field. Who wouldn’t want to do that?

But I don’t know that reassurance or clarification ever really helps in these matters.

It totally does. I may see heads-on-pikes because I’m conflating your views with the echoes of the choir, so I’m sorry if I’m doing that. I like this blog because it is eloquent and fluent in the baseball parts of MLB. I don’t read it for the dittos of the commenters, so I guess I’m not sure why I chose to dress it all down as one.

Sorry, man!